300 HISTORY OF GREECE. peninsula. This plain bad once yielded its ample produce to the free Messenians Dorians, resident in the towns of Stenyklerus and Andania. But in the time of which we speak, the name of Messenians was borne only by a body of brave but homeless exiles, whose restoration to the land of their forefathers over passed even the exile's proverbially sanguine hope. Their land was confounded with the western portion of Laconia, which reached in a south-westerly direction down to the extreme point of Cape Akritas, and northward as far as the river JSeda. Throughout his whole journey to the point last mentioned, from the borders of Bceotia and Megaris, the traveller would only step from one Dorian state into another. But on crossing from the south to the north bank of the river Neda, at a point near to its mouth, he would find himself out of Doric land altogether : first, in the territory called Triphylia, next, in that of Pisa, or the Pisatid, thirdly, in the more spacious and powerful state called Elis ; these three comprising the coast-land of Peloponne- sus from the mouth of the Neda to that of the Larissus. The Triphylians, distributed into a number of small townships, the largest of which was Lepreon, and the Pisatans, equally des- titute of any centralizing city, had both, at the period of which we are now speaking, been conquered by their more powerful northern neighbors of Elis, who enjoyed the advantage of a spacious territory united under one government ; the mid- dle portion, called the Hollow Elis, being for the most part fertile, though the tracts near the sea were more sandy and barren. The Eleians were a section of jEtolian emigrants into Peloponnesus, but the Pisatans and Triphylians had both been originally independent inhabitants of the peninsula, the latter being affirmed to belong to the same race as the Minyae who had occupied the ante-Boeotian Orchomenos : both, too, bore the ascendency of Elis with perpetual murmur and occasional resistance. Crossing the river Larissus, and pursuing the northern coast of Peloponnesus south of the Corinthian gulf, the traveller would pass into Achaia, a name which designated the narrow strip of level land, and the projecting spurs and declivities, between that gulf and the northernmost mountains of the peninsula, Skollis, Erymanthus, Aroania. Krathis, and the towering eminence called
